I once read some developer stated that games dont have characters period. We can't expect any with that attitude. For those not reading Cracked: Ripley was to be male untill they flipped the switch last minute.

One of my latest awesome concepts is to make racing game with interesting racers(indestructible cars raging from classics to scifi, maybe with mmo component, definitely with realistic driving model) where (coverart)protagonists are non-white not too young(at least one is not 30 anymore) male and female and you can play their careers independently and have em in same race(coop or AI) as well. characteristics: world similiar to TDU2 but much more fantastic, at least 8 racers every time, trippy elements when using drugs, graphics at least like GRID, interactions when not in race close to ME/DA cutscenes(without any restrictive system), cutscene camera only on demand, characters behave close to mmo players meaning the game is not the only concern, "story" is completely decided by player, multiplayer includes async race mode and race where 2 teams race in opposite direction at once(=oppositive race?).

beefpelican:Mass Effect's box art is meant to tell you about the game inside. Look at the box for the first game. You can see just from looking at it that mass effect is a grand sweeping space drama, that the main character is military, that the dude with the glowing blue eyes is evil, and that other aliens and a lady in a tight space jumpsuit will be involved. Granted, they could have had female Shepard on the cover, or black Shepard, or black female Shepard, but they had to pick something.

What they should have done was make the orange light behind Shepherd's head obscure his face.

That's...actually a really good idea. It would certainly drive the point home about how you can make choices and stuff.

This was the standout example of how to do marketing without a centralised figure. (Oddly enough, it's also cause for some despair, but for different reasons; namely, that in such a profoundly female game with an easily depicted central character, they decided to keep her hidden.) Abstract it. Dragon Age 1 used the blood dragon as its symbol. For Dragon Age 2, I'd have gone with that weird symbol thing of Kirkwall's. Or maybe the silhouette of the Kirkwall skyline? After all, Kirkwall is, in many ways, the star of DA2. Moreso than Hawke.

Trailers are, I grant, a little trickier. But again, look at Portal. There they used a clever device to convey the humour and nature of the gameplay without really using much gameplay footage. I don't believe for a second they couldn't have done something similar with Dragon Age 2. Use Varric, talking. (Hell, it's what he does.) Perhaps something about the mystery of 'The Champion of Kirkwall':

"Who is the champion? Heh. Nobody can agree. I've heard stories about how he's eight feet tall and wields a sword as long as himself; I've heard she's beautiful as a flame and wields magic just as deadly. The champion is the rebel lord of the resistance; or the tyrant's right hand. Born into power and destiny; or a Fereldan refugee caught up in the winds of chance. And y'know, the champion is all of these things, and none of them. But that's not the point. The point is, the champion changed the world. And I know the Champion's story..."

Use the images of the game. Show the setting, show the gameplay. Build intrigue and mystery.

Would that be better from a diversity standpoint? Absolutely. Anything to dilute the endless range of gruff men in the marketing. From a marketing/sales perspective in the short term? Probably not. The fact is, it's a way of signalling to the male fanbase, "Hey, this is for you. You wanna be this guy, right?"

But it's being done at the expense of the mid-to-long term. We can only grow this industry so much without getting women involved. They're half the population, and we're doing a crappy job of growing the market to them. In the end, gaming is caught in a Prisoner's Dilemma. Everyone's defecting ("just keep on using gruff men, it sells") because in the short-term it's always a better strategy than co-operating ("let's try and expand the market") even though it's limiting future growth.

That's also a good idea. Dang you guys, all manner of good ideas happening up in this forum.

The one quibble I have with both of these is something BlindChance pointed out. Mass Effect and Dragon Age, being RPGs, are about wanting to become the character, whereas Portal was really about the puzzles and GlaDOS. It was cool to play a woman, but it didn't make much of a difference in the game. Dragon Age's trailers were, as BlindChance mentioned, showing the fanbase (regardless of gender) an awesome person that they would want to be. The Legend of the Champion trailer idea is really cool, but it would mean they couldn't have any of the awesome fight trailers, which would be a lot to lose.

Should every movie critic make a film before they're allowed to say if they feel a film is good or not? And how specific do we go? Should Roger Ebert be allowed to criticise a film's writing (since he's written films) but not the direction, since he's never directed one?

Am I allowed to criticise a novel? I've written professionally, but never had a novel published.

Criticism is its own field. That Shamus Young has not written a game himself (that I'm aware of) does not disqualify him from making intelligent criticism of the gaming industry.

And if you don't think the above comments are intelligent? Then refute them. Don't just handwave the author.

You know last time I refuted this guy I got 2 weeks in the penalty box. But honestly, I've been going back and forth with people about this whole nonsense for days now. I don't see him making any new arguments that I haven't already shot down with military efficiency. So what would you want me to say here that's any different? Most of my best points were made in debate involving the females on females in games panel. If you want my real opinions go look there. I have no need to repeat them for Young when he doesn't add anything new to the debate.

I think most of my chick friends are more irritated by bland non-characters like Vanille from FFXIII and Ashley from ME1 than anything else. They're shrill, irritating, and completely pointless other than to check 'the girl' off the party checklist.

For my part, I'm damn glad to hear Shamus point out that cardboard women are just as offensive to men. I'm so damn tired of being pandered to like I'm the beer-guzzling, ass-chasing, single-minded patriarch of a sitcom.

Damn your jiggle physics, and just give me a character that doesn't make me grind my teeth in frustration every time she comes on screen.

In defense of BioWare's Mass Effect 2 box art, Drew Karpyshyn is the author of the Mass Effect novels Revelation, Ascension and Retribution and the Commander Shepard seen on the box cover looks suspiciously like him. I asked him if this was just a coincidence and he seemed to think so but I feel as though BioWare gave a little nod his way with it.

I agree with the rest though Shamus. Heck, I really enjoyed playing as Rayne from Blood Rayne (the movie was awful though).

Zom-B:Maybe a party of "player characters" would be referred to as "your party"? I mean really, if you were the GM (that's Game Master, or DM if you're the Dungeon Master) would you really even say "A group of Smurfs ambushes your party of Player Characters! What do your Player Characters do?" Doubtful.

This is a deeply pointless and off-topic argument, but for the sake of trying to get it over with...

Speaking from something close to 30 years of experience, PC is a very common term in the larger PnP RPG community. If your primary interaction is as a casual player, i can sort of understand how you might miss it if you weren't paying much attention. It's primarily used when a GM talks to someone who is not in their game. "The PCs did X and then..." If you're talking to people who are actually in the game, you would usually just say "you," "your character," "the party," or something similar.

The fact that you weren't familiar with it is kind of odd, but oh well - now you are.

I think female gamers are more bothered by obvious sexualization than they let on. I think we've just come to terms with the fact that, at this point in time anyway, that won't change. Game developers still think all men have the attention span of a thirteen year old boy, and they will pander to that misinformed notion for a good while longer. So we've switched to bargaining. Instead of "put a shirt on" we're at "you can keep the shirt off if you like, just stop acting like a moron and do something useful". It's more important that we're able to play as strong female leads, or alongside strong female backups, than it is to tone down the jiggle physics and get a lot more diversity in cup size.

Hell, even when a game has a "useful" female sidekick, chances are the AI is making her seem like a complete retard anyway. It's a losing battle. :/

Raiyan 1.0:Funny. Weren't a ton of guys offended by Lisa Foiles' attire when she started off - because they felt that kind of objectification is usually reserved for frat boys and doesn't suit their demography?

Of course, Lisa then later goes wearing a shirt that made everyone want to do the Konami code. Oh, the cheek of that girl... &nbsp :)

I actually didn't originally watch the show cause I thought it would be retarded pandering and frankly there is plenty of porn in the sea.

Then I finally watched it and was pleasantly surprised at how funny I found her and how much I enjoyed the series. It's a great show, and thankfully she tells you just who the hell she is (which made it even MORE enjoyable because I realized they didn't just hire her because she's attractive).

She was always great. It's just that the level of insecurity of some folks are unimaginable...

beefpelican:The one quibble I have with both of these is something BlindChance pointed out. Mass Effect and Dragon Age, being RPGs, are about wanting to become the character, whereas Portal was really about the puzzles and GlaDOS. It was cool to play a woman, but it didn't make much of a difference in the game. Dragon Age's trailers were, as BlindChance mentioned, showing the fanbase (regardless of gender) an awesome person that they would want to be. The Legend of the Champion trailer idea is really cool, but it would mean they couldn't have any of the awesome fight trailers, which would be a lot to lose.

What about using different characters each time? A male mage, a female warrior, a male rogue, whatever. Show off the new combat system by visualizing it in CGI. Similar to the 'classes' trailers they did make. Make the game's tagline, "Is this the Champion?"

Maybe that would have worked, maybe not. It's hard to tell if mystery and intrigue would have worked better than balls-out excitement. But they could have done it.

I think Volition in particular should get some points on this one. Granted in Saints Row 1, you had the typical male stereotypical protagonist (available in a variety of ethnicities, but basically the standard male character).

But in Saints Row 2, you could play a male, a female, and anything in between (transexual? Check. Transvestite? Check). The character customization in that game was really quite amazing.

I found subduing the rival gangs as a tough-as-nails female protagonist to be quite enjoyable. And since she did all the same things (with all the same lines) as her male counterparts, it didn't play like a female role or a male role. It was just a role that happened to be female in my particular case.

Mass Effect and Dragon Age give you a default character because it gives people a person to get attached to when they cannot properly emulate themselves to a self-made character. I know I appreciate this feature, as I was definitely not into Dragon Age: Origins when I realized that I was more attached to Morrigan and Alistair than my own character, and that I actually saw him as more of a liability than anything. This is also why the only thing that ever kept me attached to my main WoW character was achievement points.

It's true that the default does not have to be the white male, though. At least some companies have enough foresight to provide alternatives within the game. Don't expect this to change anytime soon, because the development of video games only exhibits extensions of cultural norms that have deeply rooted social origins.

I once read an article about institutionalized racial discrimination in public elementary schools (I believe it was by Jonathan Kozol, but I'm not 100%), where black children would be labeled as blacks stereotypically are (read: going to end up in jail or on the streets). They would act in conjunction with these views and end up straying toward such detrimental lifestyles. When the author was asked what could be done to fix the situation, his reply was essentially that anything that is done will only serve as a band-aid for much larger issues.

The same is true for video games. The proper way to change video games isn't through pressuring game developers to broaden their character variety. The proper way to change video games is by addressing the social context within which they are created.

RevRaptor:So A party of Pc's is a party of my characters? That really doesn't roll of the tongue to well.

Uh, no. You're just taking the piss. Language is fluid, especially english. If you want to try and say that what you just said would logically follow what I said, I'd have to ask if english was your first language.

Honestly, if you're not just being pedantic for the sake of trolling me this doesn't even deserve an answer. But just for the sake of it...

Maybe a party of "player characters" would be referred to as "your party"? I mean really, if you were the GM (that's Game Master, or DM if you're the Dungeon Master) would you really even say "A group of Smurfs ambushes your party of Player Characters! What do your Player Characters do?" Doubtful.

You would most likely say something along the lines of "A group of Care Bears ambushes your Party/Group/Posse (or even in a pinch Characters)! What do you do? Roll for initiative!"

Are you picking up what I'm putting down here?

ps- it's "...doesn't roll of the tongue too well.", not "to".

Dude we don't call it a party of player characters we call it a party of pc's. Saying pc is short and easy and very widely used in my circles. I'm surprised you have never come across it.

Also the reason my typing is sometimes bad is because I'm chronicly ill so I can't type too well and I'm often too tired/ in too much pain or doped up on my meds to spot all my mistakes. so yea thanks for making fun of that.

RevRaptor:Also the reason my typing is sometimes bad is because I'm chronicly ill so I can't type too well and I'm often too tired/ in too much pain or doped up on my meds to spot all my mistakes. so yea thanks for making fun of that.

That's right, because I can tell that you're chronically ill, just from the way you type. Don't give me that boohoo stuff. Like, should we start comparing medical problems? Should I tell you about my catheter and how it makes it hard for me to type well?

And I guarantee you that only the most pedantic, anal GM/DM would insist on calling it a "party of PCs". I didn't say I never came across it, it's just not in wide use in my circles. And again, for you and everyone else that didn't get it, for the vast majority of internet users, a "PC" is that thing sitting on your desk that has the keyboard and mouse attached to it.

This is my very last response on this abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous topic.

So what because you are too dumb to figure it out, we can't use the term?and how is using the term pc a pedantic thing its a very easy short thing to say and anyway if you have come across it why did it confuse you so much in your first post. I call bullshit. You are just back tracking now.

You have lost this argument and just don't want to admit it. several people have already responded that they know and use the term player character. Hell DnD came up with the term. So it's totally ok to call your characters pc's.

Erana:Here's a rule of thumb for devs: If you couldn't have this character fit anywhere into your game world, and you're not trying to make something cartoony like Ratchet and Clank, you need to reconsider your characterization.

Thanks for reminding Mirandas ass is hot. I just started a hardest mode playthrough on ME2, and imma tap that. Also, gaming is a numbers game, and if you think there are enough female gamers in the world to warrant pandering towards in a major title, you're wrong. Period.

Better characters overall is my cry, they don't have to be chicks or black guys or whatever. I don't like most leads full stop, they're rarely ever anything but blank slates.

2 games i can think of off the bat that involve female leads that kick ass and isnt just male pandering or Lara/Samus.

Cliche i know lol

both games scored on the average scale in terms of game play. Good but not great. Guess what they both tanked big time, sorry to say that gamer girls didn't all flock out to get these titles and bought them in enough quantities to warrant these developers to care about the audience.

Its great when everyone says "yes we need more female characters and leads that aren't doormats" but no one ever mentions that almost everyone (Bethesda Softworks and Replay Studios in this case) who tries to do that get nothing back on their investment. Until we see more buying power from hardcore women gamers, i would doubt the trend would ever change.

Plus i'm also for some mindless female pandering as well. Be a nice change of pace.

You know what I would love to see? More negative potrayals of women in games. Not all that sexualised business that they are always whining about, I mean *REAL* negative portrayals: the ones almost completely reserved for men in gaming.

I want to see more women get their heads stomped into the ground. Get blown to piece, shot to pieces, torn to pieces, whatever. I want to see them be the scum bags everyone wants to kill, and who have no redeeming features about them whatsoever.

Instead of bitching about why you cant have your female Commander Shepard on the box so a pair of tits and a vagina can validate your entire gaming experience, or why in a male created, male run, male dominated industry you cant have equal treatment (instead of having to do what men do in female dominated areas: deal with it), why not go for all aspects of gaming, not just girl power ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy.

When its not just almost entirely my own gender resigned to the truly SHIT roles in gaming, I might have a bit more sympathy for the girl power whiners who want their kick-ass chicks paraded around everywhere.

Thank you. As a female gamer, this whole situation really does talk down to you guys as well. Even if many of you can't see it. A marketing department or Dev team, sticks in a bounce boobies feature in some game, and you lot are just supposed to run to the store, throw down $60 buck for it, in order to see some virtual tits? Wake up guys. That is truly treating men as if you all are so stupid, you'd fall for anything and pay money as long it there's jugs. Come on, they are only using women in order to sell shit to you, because you're dumb. Is that what you want? Are you dumb? Do you really want the AAA gaming industry to continue to believe that you are?

See, because it is about diversity, just not the way that you THINK it is.

Xaositect:You know what I would love to see? More negative potrayals of women in games. Not all that sexualised business that they are always whining about, I mean *REAL* negative portrayals: the ones almost completely reserved for men in gaming.

I want to see more women get their heads stomped into the ground. Get blown to piece, shot to pieces, torn to pieces, whatever. I want to see them be the scum bags everyone wants to kill, and who have no redeeming features about them whatsoever.

Instead of bitching about why you cant have your female Commander Shepard on the box so a pair of tits and a vagina can validate your entire gaming experience, or why in a male created, male run, male dominated industry you cant have equal treatment (instead of having to do what men do in female dominated areas: deal with it), why not go for all aspects of gaming, not just girl power ones that make you feel warm and fuzzy.

When its not just almost entirely my own gender resigned to the truly SHIT roles in gaming, I might have a bit more sympathy for the girl power whiners who want their kick-ass chicks paraded around everywhere.

Of course those are only 5 games out of a big list, but it's how things are. and of course they all sound like american dudes, the voice actors are american! if you switch the game's language to Spanish or Portuguese, you'll always get Spanish actors and Portuguese actors! Why not Argentine or Puerto rican actors? why not Brazilian or Angolan actors?

I loved that panel. I feel like the comments here have gotten onto their own tangential topic (nothing wrong with that). I was thrilled that the panel members said they're nothing wrong with sexy characters. Guess what, women are sexy. I liked that they said androgyny isn't the answer. Our society as a whole tends to be in deep denial about the prevalence of the Madonna Whore message. Hence the fact that using the term "slut" is still acceptable among women.

What I took out of the panel was that there needs to be diversity WITHIN the female characters. Vulnerable, maternal, delicate, ass kicking, provocative...all qualities that different women possess, and one is not superior to another.

My favorite quotes from it were "I hate Princess Peach. I hate her because she's fully capable of getting herself out of trouble, she's just lazy!"

Interesting and valid points. Though, I think the lack of female characters also has something to do with the lack of women working in the industry. I am dubious a male story writer could create a female lead character that women are happy with.

The same goes with other races. When was the last time you saw a black character who wasn't a walking stereotype? In the few instances there is a black character in a game, they almost always use the same ignorant formula: Tall, jive talking, top with afro/corn rows. And even with Japan's huge influence on gaming, it's shocking that almost all Asians in games are either silent, deeply contemplative and reverent-to-a-fault of some outmoded culture, or they're the bumbling, buck-toothed ching-chang-chong type. Even Japanese games tend to portray their characters as vaguely Western, although I think that's another topic.

It pains me to say it, but I think until there is more diversity behind the scenes, games may be better off not broaching the subject.

I have nothing against playing as a female, but I'd rather play a blob of goo and it be fun than play as a specified gender and it not be.

I personally think that including another female "skin"(i say this because that's really the only difference for a lot of these games), would be fine. Half of the characters in gaming aren't exactly too grand anyway and another skin/voice actor is fine.

However: We shouldn't want to have this "you can also play as" option. We should want a female or male playable character and that is IT.(outside of make-your-own games like SR4 or the Elder Scrolls).-Because having this option really detracts from the gameplay.

Jordi:I wonder how big the percentage of female gamers actually is (although it'd be even more interesting to know the figure in the hypothetical situation that more games would be targeted at them). Of the girls/women I know, exactly 0 are interested in gaming. And I have the feeling it doesn't really have anything to do with the usual gender of the protagonists. They just seem put off by the whole idea of sitting in front of a computer and playing. Now of course, the women I know might not be representative of the gender as a whole, so I'm wondering what the actual amount of female interest is.

And although I personally wouldn't mind seeing more games aimed at women, I don't know if it's immediately a sound business strategy to do so. Let's be very generous and say that the male/female gamer ratio is 60:40. It may seem intuitive that the best strategy is to make 60% of games for men and 40% for women (of course there's a middle ground, but I'm simplifying), but the simple fact of the matter is that the optimal (short term) strategy is to aim everything at the majority (search "matching vs maximizing").

On the other hand, if more women (and people in general) could be persuaded to take up gaming, it may very well help building a much bigger target audience to begin with. But that is probably more of a long term thing (i.e. if they'd put a female Hawke on the DA2 box, none of my female friends would have even noticed). I'm not saying this isn't a good time to start tapping into that market and hopefully changing some of the negative views that many people have of gaming. I'm just saying that if you're only looking at the short term (i.e. you want your game to succeed NOW), it might be safer to make a white American space marine game.

it's actually 47/53, but with the caveat there's a lot of segregation, IE most of the people buying FPSs are gonna be guys.

Though... it suddenly occurs to me that AAAs failure to sell on the Wii may have a lot to do with its failure to target non white men, given that the Wii had a much higher percentage of female owners than the other two consoles.

As long as women are SEXY they will continue to be sexualized!It's a war you CAN'T win!

Make her sexy you lose!Make her ugly you lose!Make her butch you lose!Make her dumb you lose!Make her smart you lose!Make her strong you lose!Make her evil you lose!Make her the victim you lose!Make her the villain you lose!Make her the hero you lose!MAKE HER GOD YOU LOSE!